A model mom: Melbourne native urges community to #followyourdreams

A model mom: Melbourne native urges community to #followyourdreams

Tari Elegele lost the love of her life (and father of her then-unborn child) to gun violence. She could’ve crumbled under the heartbreak. But she chose to make a better life for her family and follow her dreams. Now, she wants to inspire others to do the same.

Tari Elegele was working in a pharmacy on April 22, 2014, when it hit her.

She wasn’t where she was meant to be.

“I can’t fill one more prescription today,” Elegele, 30, recalled thinking. “I can’t save someone else’s life today when I’m losing my own.”

Her feelings were fueled by the calendar date that had gnawed at her – the birthday of her late boyfriend, Troy Harden.  A 22-year-old with a budding boxing career, Harden was gunned down in 2007 outside an acquaintance’s apartment in a poverty-stricken area of Melbourne. Elegele was 4 months pregnant.

“Two weeks prior to Troy being killed, he came to me and he told me, ‘Tari, make sure you name my daughter Faith,’ ” Elegele recalled. “We didn’t know she was a girl. It was too early to tell. He just told me to have faith.  He kept saying, ‘faith.’ I didn’t get it,  I didn’t understand what it meant.”

When Harden’s words came back to Elegele that 2014 spring day,  she decided right then to trust that it would all work out.  She walked out of her job to pursue a modeling career — a passion she’d always had but sidelined after Harden’s death.

Six months later, Elegele said she was on a Tampa billboard, had a commercial in the works, as well as a reality TV show pilot. It’s easy to see why. She’s a stunner, with her close-cropped hair, striking features, gorgeous skin and dazzling smile. She exudes elegance, even on a weekday summer morning as daughters Trinity, 8, and Kari, 6, bustle around as Elegele gets ready.

“Doors just began to open,” Elegele said of leaving her heath care job to chase her dream. “I can’t even begin to explain it. Because it’s unexplainable. Some things happen in life where there is no logical reason, and there is no logical reason why he said, ‘Have faith.’ I didn’t get it. But now I do.”

Most recently, she ranked 35th in the Miss Jetset cover model contest, standing out among the 10,000-plus who entered. While she didn’t snag the grand prize, she’s thrilled she got as far as she did (and hopes to raise money to attend a Sept. 10 magazine celebration in Scottsdale). The contest aids the B+ Foundation, a nonprofit providing financial and emotional support to families of children with cancer nationwide.

Elegele wants her community to know: They, too, can rise above their circumstances. And she’s ready to make it her mission.

Elegele said she’s started the process of establishing a nonprofit, “Follow Your Dreams.” She wants to encourage other black youth to finish high school and go to college. She wants the cycle of crime and gun violence to end. (Her own brother, she said, survived being shot nine times.)

“I come back now, and I see the youth…it’s like they have no inspiration,” a stoic Elegele said, her voice cracking. “We have to find another way to live. It’s so easy to be a product of your environment here.

Her story

Elegele grew up in the Melbourne community of Briarwood, one of 10 children. She recalls her mom’s open door policy – anyone was welcome for love and support.

“That love she instilled in us showed me someone loves me, and I must love myself enough to want better,” Elegele said.

But there were struggles. Gun violence was the norm in the Briarwood community. Elegele’s mother spent a couple of years in prison on drug charges, sending the 6-year-old and her siblings to foster care temporarily before their grandmother relocated from Tallahassee to care for them. Money was tight. They lived in a double-wide trailer.